1. Field of the Invention
The invention pertains to a coffeemaker of the drip type wherein water is heated within a housing and pumped to a spreader to discharge into a supported carafe. The coffeemaker housing may support a basket filter assembly or a separate assembly may be supported directly on the carafe with the hot water dripping through the coffee in the filter to produce brewed coffee in the carafe. The present invention is directed to an improved basket and filter assembly of a single piece that automatically adjusts itself to produce the correct brew for large or smaller amounts of coffee.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In electric drip coffeemakers, there is provided a basket and filter assembly that performs efficiently at maximum capacity. At low levels, more coffee is used per cup to obtain the same strength of coffee due to inefficient extraction. Various multi-part and complex devices have been developed to overcome this inefficiency. Typically, one device reduces the cross-section area of the basket by squeezing a given amount of coffee into a smaller cross-section and higher pile to provide a longer path for the water to drip through a given amount of coffee to obtain the same brew strength at smaller quantities. Because of the complexity of the device, it is expensive to produce and has only marginal benefits. Other arrangements may use a special smaller basket to be inserted in the main basket to hold a smaller amount of coffee when few cups are desired. While effective, this requires an additional piece of equipment with manufacturing costs and storage problems.
It is desired to provide a basket and filter assembly that automatically provides the correct brew for small and large quantities of coffee for two reasons. First, with coffee costs high it is incumbent that the correct amount of coffee and no more be used. Second, it is preferable that no additional components be required because of their extra cost and storage problems on the part of both the manufacturer and the user. The present invention is directed to such a device in a basket filter assembly that efficiently extracts a desired amount of coffee from the coffee grounds without any parts other than a unique basket and standard paper filter.